Chapter 2
Deciding that Niki was a fruitcake with extra crazy currants, Gavin made every effort to steer clear of her after that. However, she had different ideas. Even when he thought he’d given her the slip, he would turn a corner or open a classroom door and there she’d be, popping up like an incredibly insulting jack-in-thebox, Bart trailing her every step. He didn’t know why she was so keen to accompany him both in and out of school, and whenever he asked, she invariably changed the subject. In one incident a few months after their first meeting, he’d accused her of spying on him with a pair of binoculars, which she vehemently denied, claiming
instead to be an innocent bird-spotter. An explanation that would’ve been more believable had they not at the time been standing in the queue for McDonald’s.
Gavin considered that the attention from Niki wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been in any way, shape or form … pleasant. But that was not the case. Reserve my table at luncheon, reserve my place in art class, reserve my seat on the bus – there was an awful lot of reserving.
“Entitled, that’s the word,” he confided to Bart in a quiet moment between slights. They were in biology with Mr Chetty. At least here he had some respite from her, sitting on the opposite side of the room. Not that Bart was a great improvement over Niki. He was one of those people whose life consisted of exercise and salad (Gavin had never seen him with so much as a packet of Fruit Pastilles). Perpetually happy, he was an advert for a clean-living, healthy lifestyle. And, honestly, he was a bit annoying – though not half as much as his sister. “She’s so arrogant,” Gavin griped. “I mean, some people act like they’re better than everyone else, but usually they’re covering for the fact that they’re lacking in confidence. Niki’s not like that. You look into those eyes and you can tell that she utterly believes she’s top banana.”
Bart nodded sagely. “I hadn’t appreciated that the banana was so revered in your culture. Then again,
who could resist its potassium-rich, curvy, squishy yellowness – am I right?”
Gavin regarded him with a mixture of confusion and sympathy. “I can’t imagine being her brother.”
“No,” agreed Bart. “Must be dreadful.” He caught Gavin’s expression, quickly cleared his throat and nodded again. “I mean, yes, dreadful. The entitlement. The arrogance. The bananas.”
Mr Chetty instructed the class to choose partners for the next experiment. Before Gavin knew what was happening, Niki had marched over, ejected Bart from his chair and claimed Gavin for her partner. She flopped down next to him and swept her gaze round the class.
“So which one is to be dissected?” she asked in a bored voice.
“Beg pardon?”
“We are studying anatomy, yes?” She cast an imperious look over her classmates. “Then which one of these specimens do we cut up?” Her eyes brightened with excitement. “Or do we get to choose? If so, I pick Audrey Woods. Although overweight, the pallor of her skin suggests healthy internal organs that would prove suitable for study. So is there an operating table in the stationery cupboard or do we slice her open here?”
“You know I can hear you, right?” said Audrey, who
was sitting at the next desk.
“We don’t do live animal dissections in this country any more,” said Gavin. “Perhaps in your old school…?”
Niki nodded with understanding and in a matter-offact voice said, “What you need is a specimen that would welcome being dissected. Bart?”
“Right away!”
Bart sprang from his seat, charged to the front of the class and offered himself up for scientific study. It took a surprising amount of persuasion for Mr Chetty to convince him that under no circumstances was he about to slice open a student. The remainder of the hour passed without further incident, but Gavin found himself watching Niki with renewed bafflement. And yet for all her strangeness – or perhaps because of it – he was aware that the other kids in school were spellbound by her. Sometimes it felt to him like Niki was riding atop a glorious, rainbow-coloured carnival float, waving regally at a vast crowd, lit by her own personal ray of sunshine, while he was standing by the side of the road holding a stick of candyfloss, watching her go by. In the rain.
Gavin walked home from school alone. It was one of the few times he could count on not being harassed by Niki. While he liked nothing better than to leave at
the end of the school day, she crammed her week with every possible after-school activity. Chess club, martial arts, debate team and pottery, to name but a few; she possessed a competitive spirit that compelled her to pit herself against everyone and anyone. Even her ceramic sheep were aggressive. He reached his house on Park Street and turned into the driveway. If eluding Niki in school was hard, doing so at home was even harder, since she lived in the house next door. As soon as the Apples had moved in a few months ago, their driveway became a procession of nosy neighbours bearing casseroles and questions. But to the frustration of the street, and with the exception of Niki’s relentless pursuit of Gavin, the Apples kept themselves largely to themselves.
Unlike his house, Niki’s had an upper floor and the top window with the star-patterned curtains was her bedroom. He knew that she wouldn’t be home yet – it was music practice today and she was first violin in the orchestra. Apart from a few odd facts like these, it struck him that he didn’t know much about her. He knew even less about her family. He had briefly met Mercedes, her mum, when she’d invited him over for what she called a “typical human lunch”. She served jam sandwiches, which turned out to be a slice of chicken squeezed between layers of strawberry jam. Her dad, Sam, was
just as odd. One Saturday morning Gavin had been in his back garden, which bordered the Apples’, when through the fence that divided them he’d heard Niki’s mum and dad talking.
“Have you got any dark stuff?” Mercedes had asked.
Sam hadn’t answered at first, leaving a thoughtful pause during which Gavin stuck his eye to a small hole in the fence, to see the long-haired Sam looking past Mercedes with a thousand-yard stare.
“I’ve seen things,” Sam had muttered. “Terrible things. Attack ships on fi—”
“No,” Mercedes had interrupted him. “Dark stuff. I’m putting a wash on.”
As eccentric as the other Apples were, it was Niki who took the biscuit. Actually, she didn’t take it so much as terrify it out of its wrapper and crush it to dust in her triumphantly aloft fist. Gavin stuck his key in the door. He had a strong suspicion that she was hiding something. Other people would be desperate to know what, but not him. He preferred to keep his head down and get on with his life. Whatever Niki was keeping secret, he was certain of one thing.
It had nothing to do with him.